


Cafuné

by drinkbloodlikewine, whiskeyandspite



Series: The Odalisque Timestamps [15]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Devotion, M/M, Ocean Sex, Sickfic, adoration, caring and fluff, skinnydipping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-14
Updated: 2015-03-21
Packaged: 2018-03-17 19:15:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3540884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/pseuds/drinkbloodlikewine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He thinks of Achilles, bronze-wrought and born of gods, and exhales pleasure at the thought that his boy will outlive that weak-ankled beauty. A smile curves, irrepressible, when Hannibal considers too how much greater the list of dead beneath Will’s name will be, than even those of besieged Troy.</i>
</p><p>  <i>A wonder and a terror, horror and glory.</i></p><p>Will gets sick, and our monster can do little more than adoringly care for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> _"Insufferable boy."_

He glows, even in moonlight.

Radiant and bright, his skin glistens in the water, Will emerges from the gentle waves that wash against ivory sand. The only color between white moon and black sky, pale beach and dark water shows in flashes of lean body grown remarkably strong in the short years since he feigned life as a starving street urchin. Hannibal watches him, from the balcony, a flash of scarlet in the ember of his cigarette as he drags.

He thinks of Achilles, bronze-wrought and born of gods, and exhales pleasure at the thought that his boy will outlive that weak-ankled beauty. A smile curves, irrepressible, when Hannibal considers too how much greater the list of dead beneath Will’s name will be, than even those of besieged Troy.

A wonder and a terror, horror and glory.

Hannibal stubs out his cigarette, and returns to the house to descend down to the beach. He turns off the lamps as he goes to let them be lit only by the envious moon and the stars whose light Will shames with his own brightness.

The nighttime swims had come and gone in Will’s routine, initially because he could not get enough of the warm water, the private beach, the solitude and freedom. Then he had grown bored, had done it less, but once in a while Hannibal will find his bed empty, or Will excusing himself after dinner, to strip and dive languid into the warm waves.

He is a powerful swimmer, endurance admirable - Hannibal allows himself the credit for that - and technique honed. Yet what Will does, now, is far from swimming, it is a temptation, it is a siren luring sailors to their watery deaths, it is a sea nymph, carnivorous and cruel.

He is so entirely, truly beautiful.

Hannibal watches him dive beneath the dark waves, resurface several feet further out, head back and arms spread as he pushes his body up to float atop the waves, skin like porcelain, like light-warmed amber, like moonstones and ivory well-lived.

The sand is still a little warm beneath Hannibal’s toes, though he digs them deeper into the cool, thick layer beneath. Hands in pockets, loose pants and a linen shirt, he finds his way to the water’s edge, and allows a rare shiver when the water rushes foaming against his feet. Will cannot hear him, his ears filled with the ocean’s heartbeat, though in truth, Hannibal would not dare break this reverie with words. He watches as Will’s prone body is lifted and lowered, stretched across the sea as if it were a bed of finest silks.

He loves him, and the thought bruises and bleeds through all the hollows of his chest, a wonderful agony that Hannibal does not seek to staunch.

An ache forces Hannibal to lift a hand to his cheek, to rub away the smile that’s caused it. He unbuttons his shirt, folded and set away from the grasping tide, and sheds his pants in kind. The scars that have made their way to his body look as strange shadows in the light, and though he is strong, still, it is far from the youthful, wild tense and snap of sinew in his boy, now blissfully at rest. Hannibal presses a hand against his stomach, and hums a mild mourning for definition that exists no longer as time presses inexorably onward.

It is the one force that he has not yet found out how to conquer, regardless of how many lives he’s taken in the manner of sweet scarlet-drenched Erzsebet. Perhaps, he considers, immortality is thus, lying serene in the tireless sea.

The water is cold until it isn’t anymore, and Hannibal allows the resistance his arms draw as he pulls himself through it, languid and slow. He makes as little noise as the water itself does, until he reaches his boy and watches his smile tilt even as his eyes remain closed. Instincts honed and practiced, even before Hannibal had gotten his hands on him.

Will seeks out with a little hand and splays his fingers in the water, softened by it already, as his hair spreads like ink in the water around him. He licks his lips of salt, opens just one eye and dips his head back to see Hannibal, to narrow his eyes at him, before deliberately, almost effortlessly, allowing his body to sink beneath the cool surface of the water. He all but disappears from sight until he slithers up against the man’s chest with a hum, and presses salt lips to dry ones and kisses him.

If he is a siren, Hannibal would gladly be drowned, so long as he might go like this. He slips his arms beneath Will’s own, curling his hands over the boy’s shoulders to keep him near. Their legs brush as they tread water, far enough out that there is no floor beneath their feet, and the kiss breaks when Will slips a leg over Hannibal’s hip, and the older man’s smile widens.

Will is wonderfully warm against Hannibal’s chest, radiating heat as much as brightness, a star burning beautiful. Creation and destruction, all encapsulated, in skinny hips that Hannibal reaches beneath the waves to grasp, in the smooth chest that slides slick against Hannibal’s own. Sleek fingers trace the line of Hannibal’s cheekbone, to the bridge of his nose, and follow the curve of his lips as they part to take that digit deep against his tongue.

Little breaths and soft noises, pushed from Will by each rise and fall of the waves. He doesn’t need the spit against his finger, he wants it. Just as when he curls up against Hannibal and rubs his cock against his thigh he wants it, naked and wanton and debauched, unashamed to be wanted and taken and fucked here, in the water.

Will hums, perhaps a word, perhaps just a soft noise, and nuzzles, bends to suck salt water off of Hannibal’s neck. He traces the veins that run down his arm to his wrist, grasps that to guide him back against Will’s ass, hotter still in the water, spreads himself and arches back.

Shameless, beautiful thing.

They will drown, like this, buried in each other, and Hannibal finds he does not care. He watches Will’s lips part as fingers press into him, fire against his fingertips as his boy squirms and grins and bites his lip on that little pleased noise again.

He is terrible.

He is wonderful.

He is Hannibal’s, in every moan and sigh and day and night and lifetime.

Touching slow, to tease as much as to prolong, Hannibal’s eyes hood as he takes in the rapt pleasure that softens Will’s features even more. He is youth incarnate, in all its spontaneity and fearlessness, in all the ruddy blooms that heat his skin and the gentle curves that ease years away. Hannibal groans, low, and presses that sound against Will’s throat, bared to him when the boy lays his head back with a little laugh.

It hitches, sweet and broken, when Hannibal curls his fingers deep, and Will’s voice melts in a moan that vibrates beneath Hannibal’s mouth.

They don’t need words. They rarely need words. Just pushes and touches of warm fingers and warmer lips, tickling strands of hair against bare skin, and even less than that, even just the weight of the other while cooking dinner, while writing a letter, reading a book. 

Reassurance.

Reminders.

Precious, precious things.

Will’s toes point in the water, curl and splay and he laughs, squeezing hard against the fingers in him, tight with his legs against the man before him. He wants him always, wants this, wants more, wants to smell his hair in the morning and doze on his chest in the garden. He wants little more than just this, just them, and so Will kisses him deep, tugs Hannibal’s wet hair and laughs against him again, a wordless need, a demand in that petulant, childish way he has not managed to lose in growing up.

The ocean is quieter, this far from the shore, only a gentle rocking motion with the waves that rise the nearer towards the beach they go. Hannibal lets himself be moved, by sea and boy alike, each as powerful as the other in the control they hold over the man. He wraps a rough arm around the wriggling nymph that clings to him, second leg joining the first in surrounding Hannibal’s hips. He will have him or he will drown in the attempt, and as water spills into his lungs he will only mourn that he could not kiss Will one more time.

Will keeps an arm out aside, spanning through the water to help keep their tangled bodies afloat. His other snakes between them, to grasp his cock and Hannibal’s together, both filling taut in the warm waters, tightening between their pressing bodies. Hannibal works his fingers loose of Will, teasing a slow, wanting circle, and runs a hand beneath a lithe thigh as their lips collide in a stormy ebb and flow, teeth and tongues and growling laughter.

He thinks of the first time they met, as he stood panting over the wild-eyed and dangerous boy who had fought his way free of certain death. Will laughed, lips dark with blood, when their eyes met in terrifying kinship.

He thinks of curses sworn in Greek, again and again, fading into whispers so faint Hannibal was sure he only imagined them, until he could make his boy whole again with trembling fingers and the only prayers the man has ever uttered.

He thinks of when Will arrived here, and stumbling, launched himself against the man to wrap him in arms and legs, and between them in as many languages as they could manage, they whispered what both had resisted for so long.

In truth, they could no more fight it than the ocean could fight the pull of tides.

Will clambers higher, a delighted little thing, and coaxes, bends, wriggles to get Hannibal's cock against him, slippery with seawater and their mingled slick. He guides, lips parted against Hannibal’s, and moans, wanton and loud and pretty, when he stretches him. It is Will who works himself down, arching his back and taking Hannibal deeper, Will who laughs in pleasure and tries to keep them afloat as his body alights with need.

Sparks upon sparks of it.

Under his skin and through his hair and bright behind his eyes.

Will leans close and whispers filth against Hannibal’s ear, laughs when the swat aimed at his thigh falls soft due to the water, and makes his words sweet instead. Soft things, gentle admissions and adorations, he rocks against Hannibal’s cock and moans his sweet wishes against him.

Hannibal can do no more than keep them both afloat, utterly in the sway of the boy who works himself to light and gentle laughter atop him. It is a strange sensation, weightless and heavy all at once, buoyant and drowning in the words poured against his ear. Hannibal listens, memorizes every breath and movement, watches the moon shine like mercury off Will’s shoulders, glittering bright as diamonds in his hair and on his long lashes, heavy lidded across eyes of transcendent blue. He is perfect, and Hannibal tells him so, again and again.

He loves him, and any breath that isn’t caught between their lips confesses it, on utterances of endless affection and wordless sighs.

The water feels cold compared to the heat of Will’s body, holding him tight as the water skims across them. Hannibal rests his cheek against Will’s chest, mouth on his throat, his pulse a countertime to the pulse of the water that carries them. One arm around Will’s waist, the other between them, he grasps Will’s cock, as familiar to him as his own. His thumb works along the vein he knows by memory, rubs beneath the flared head swollen hot, across the tip to feel Will shudder and clench.

Will’s arms shudder in the water, working them strong through the waves to keep them up as he starts to lose himself to this, sensation and emotion and everything between them. Acting like stupid children by playing in the waves, fumbling close and hot and intimate together.

Will moans, again, again, stretches his lips in a grin and laughs and does it a fourth time, long and helpless and needy, pulling Hannibal's name into seventeen syllables, wriggling in his arms as he tenses his muscles and relaxes them, over and over around Hannibal’s cock.

Wind slaps his wet hair against his face and Will laughs at that too. He bites his lip as Hannibal bites him, trembles as he comes closer and closer until he spills hot between them, Hannibal's name gurgled into the water with a laugh as Will’s arms fail him for a moment and they bob below the waterline, and come back up almost immediately.

And then salty kisses and needy little whines, coaxing Hannibal to his own release with words and sounds and Will’s entire body responding to his cock with such pleasure.

Hannibal curses him and blesses him, swears oaths against and to him, promises him the world and claims him as the source of its inevitable destruction. And when, finally, Hannibal fills him, he is silent, twitching ecstatic pulses into his body as the treading of his legs grows unsteady. The water again overtakes them, but as it does Hannibal keeps Will tight against his chest beneath the water and kisses him. They share breath, passed between mouths closed so tightly together that they are as one, air shared between their bodies made whole together, hearts hammering in tandem.

It lasts, this strange unison that they could share with no other, as they emerge sputtering from the waves, laughing, gasping both, and separate. Will lingers for a moment, and Hannibal finds himself more breathless than any ocean could ever make him, to see his little wolf illuminated in the moonlight, all crooked grin and bright eyes, before he vanishes beneath the surface.

He gives chase, seeking flashes of pale ankle in the darkness, grasping with fingers and releasing before he’s kicked in retribution. Neither are old or young, like this, both timeless to the other, and Will has scarcely breached the shore before Hannibal is atop him, tackling him to the rough sand and turning him to his back to kiss him, panting, again and again.

Will laughs, a delighted, childish giggle, and wraps all his limbs around Hannibal, content to lie with the sand digging into his back for now, content to feel the waves just slip against their bodies. Eventually, though, he wriggles free, crawls to stand and watch as Hannibal gathers his clothes and slips them over his wet skin, uncaring. Will had come bare, from the house, and will return bare to it.

He races and retreats, spinning with his arms out just because he can and no one can see. He howls at the moon and leaves his head back to look at it as Hannibal comes up behind him and wraps him in warm arms. He declines going in for a moment more, several, as he pants warm breath into the steadily cooling air, as he watches the stars come up one by one until his skin is dry and he can shake the sand from it.

Inside, he checks all the locks and forgoes a shower, contented to clamber into Hannibal’s arms and bury himself in them until morning.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Just at thirty-nine degrees, roughly,” he sighs, drawing away to sit up only to find a clammy arm across his middle._
> 
> _“Imperial,” mutters Will._
> 
> _“Just over one hundred and two. I suppose it’s unfair to make you do math like this.” Hannibal runs a hand through Will’s hair, still tangled with salt from the sea they shared the night before._

“You have a fever.”

“Fuck.” Will croaks and buries himself further in the blankets. His eyes hurt. His head hurts. His bones hurt. Everything fucking hurts. And as though to make it even worse, Hannibal is entirely well. No coughing for him. No sore throat. No runny nose or fucking fever.

“Language,” hums Hannibal, but there’s little bite to his warning. He presses his wrist to the boy’s brow, to gauge the heat that he can see darkening Will’s cheeks in blotches of pink, and taste in the air sweet as treacle. A cloying, thick scent that Hannibal tries to swallow away but can’t, disapproval in the creases of his brow.

“Just at thirty-nine degrees, roughly,” he sighs, drawing away to sit up only to find a clammy arm across his middle.

“Imperial,” mutters Will.

“Just over one hundred and two. I suppose it’s unfair to make you do math like this.” Hannibal runs a hand through Will’s hair, still tangled with salt from the sea they shared the night before, now heavy with sweat. His disapproval grows, evident in the bare narrowing of his eyes, as if he might somehow intimidate the illness away. “You see what happens when you flaunt your bareness to the world?”

Will buries his face against the pillow, shivering beneath the thin sheet that usually suffices. “Fuck you.”

“Mm.” Hannibal works his way from beneath Will’s arm, but bends again to kiss his hair, licking the salt from his lips as he rubs gently down the boy’s trembling, tired arm. “I will run a bath for you. Is your stomach uneasy, as well?”

“There’s nothing in it,” Will mumbles, curls into a ball beneath the sheet. “I wouldn’t test the theory though, I like it empty.”

Hannibal hums, for the moment does not push food on the boy. He leaves him to run the water in the large claw-footed tub in their bathroom. It’s a ridiculous thing, one he had had to have and Will adores it. But the thought, now, of Will even moving an inch from where he is sounds like hell for him.

In retrospect, he should have known better, should have brought a towel, should not have stared up into the sky for however long he had stayed there as his hair dried in tangled curls on his head. He had felt cold. He had _felt_ his body respond to this. He should have known better.

He feels utterly miserable, curls deeper into the blanket when Hannibal returns, the water still running white noise in the expansive bathroom. His entire body erupts in shivers as Hannibal strokes his hair again and he nuzzles into his cool hand, tilting his head to kiss the fingertips before Hannibal moves them away. He turns the back of his hand against the boy’s brow, the flat of it against his cheek, and Will moans at the cool skin touched to his own, searing.

“Sweet boy,” murmurs the older man, careful when he sits on the edge of the bed to not unsettle Will more than necessary. “Was this my doing?”

“Yes.”

The curt answer earns a widened smile from Hannibal, who leans low to inhale the sugar-sweetness of him, like simple syrup, like nectar. His lips touch to Will’s temple and he rubs his arm, despite the moans it elicits, until Will’s shivers subside to trembling. He considers the bath, considers the boy, and stands again to work his arms beneath the fussy little thing and lift him against his chest.

Lukewarm water, not hot and not cold, to balance out the scalding temperature of his body. “You will rest here,” Hannibal tells him, frowning when Will’s arms slip clammy around his neck. “Just long enough for me to make a tea for you, little one, and then I will return.”

"What if I drown?" Will mumbles, and although a brief pang of worry skitters through Hannibal at the thought, he can feel the smile pressed to his neck to know Will is making light of anything, right now, to divert attention from how weak he is with fever. It is rare Will is weak at all.

He makes a sharp, very displeased sound when he’s set into the bath and immediately curls up again, but he doesn’t move beyond that, does not disobey and climb out. Hannibal watches as Will steels himself before sinking below the surface to wet his hair. When he pokes up again, Hannibal kisses his forehead.

"Stay."

"Staying," Will sighs, opening his eyes to watch Hannibal leave the room, and Will alone in it. As rare as it is for Will to be weak, it is not rare than Hannibal is so attentive to him. Every day there are gentle touches and soft words, every day smiles and dinner and breakfast in bed and kisses. As much as they bare their teeth to snarl and snap in play, the softness between them underlies everything.

So Will waits, trembling and good.

Hannibal’s steps carry him away reluctantly, a nervous thrum tightening his chest simply in knowing that Will is unwell, however manageable the fevered cold that’s taken him. He tugs on pants as he goes, still sandy from the beach the night before, and makes his way out to the garden to gather a few fresh clippings - yarrow and feverfew, elderflower and peppermint. The morning shines incongruously bright against the memory of the night before, pale bodies awash in sea and starlight.

In the kitchen, the herbs are joined in gauze with slivers of ginger root, and set to steep inside a copper kettle as Hannibal begins coffee for himself. Each drink bubbles and brews quietly, and working his jaw in thought, Hannibal is unable to resist the urge to begin a pot of soup, as well. Chicken, a milder meat than those he’d normally use, celery and carrots and onions with sprinklings of thyme and bay. He will make the noodles later, so that they are still soft from the working of his hands through flour and egg, and not overcooked.

The soup is left to simmer as he returns slowly upstairs, tea in one hand and coffee in the other.

Will’s eyes are closed, knees drawn up and arms wrapped around himself for warmth, despite it being him that warms the water, now, and he opens them when he hears Hannibal, resting his head against his shoulder.

"I'm going to have a grudge against the ocean for a while, I think."

Hannibal hums, passes the cup over for Will to take, watches the boy rearrange his limbs, usually so spry and quick, now sluggish with fever, to take it. Will ducks his head to breathe the smells in, smile pulling at his lips before he leans back and looks at Hannibal again, stretching his legs out in the tub.

"Thank you."

Sipping his coffee before setting it aside, Hannibal moves away only enough to take a small, clean cloth from one of the cabinets. He folds it once over, and then again, lowering to his knees beside the bath to dip it into the water. Gentle hands wipe Will’s fever-ruddy skin free of the salt that still clings to him. He dips the cloth again, and runs it gently along Will’s brow, his cheeks, squeezing it over his hair and smiling, softly, when Will shivers roughly at the water cascading over him.

“Tell me what ails you,” Hannibal intones softly, resting a hand against Will’s belly as he brings water over him again and again. “Will you eat, were I to bring you something mild?”

Will considers. Nausea has not plagued him yet, just fever, the tickling beginnings of a cough that he knows will grow to overcome him for several days. He nods, arching into the water that drops over his skin, cool and clean. The tea he sips carefully, still hot, but aromatic and pleasant, enough to soothe him to a proximity of sleepiness. 

"I fear if I eat I will immediately sleep after."

"Good. Your body will need to recover and rest is intrinsic in the process."

"But I want to stay up with you," Will complains, smile warm on his face as he opens his eyes to see Hannibal again. He wants to fall asleep on him, head pressed to his chest, nuzzled against the hair there, breathing him in, familiar and intoxicating. 

“You seek to make me sick, in turn,” accuses Hannibal, his smile widening as Will grins, drowsy and sweet.

“I like it when you’re sick. Then I get to take care of you.”

“You mean that you get to mock the things I say, in fever-dreams and delirium.”

“That too,” Will agrees, and he turns his face against the wide hand that presses to his cheek, as if by touch alone Hannibal could take his sickness from him. Gentle touches, but each one sends a shiver through the boy whose muscles ache with the acid burn of illness, and Hannibal shifts to sit behind the tub, so that he can press his hands into Will’s shoulders and work them loose again.

“If you eat,” Hannibal offers, “I will lay with you. I will risk my own infection, awful boy, if it pleases you.”

Anything. He would risk anything - his own life, if it were requested - to satisfy his boy, whose wet hair he nuzzles with gentle huffs of breath to breathe him in. Seeking through every sense as if it might reveal some tangible cause of this distressing development that has rendered Hannibal wrought with worry for his little wolf, to see him so weakened.

"I will eat," Will agrees, smiling at the put-upon tone, at the way Hannibal pretends to fight this when Will can feel how hard it is for him to not touch him for even a moment.

He climbs from the tub when he is guided, no longer dry with salt, body still tense with hot muscles and shivering. Will curls against Hannibal as he’s dried, curls into a ball in bed beneath more blankets that are added for him. He would go with Hannibal, now, to make whatever meal is meant for him, to eat it and know he will enjoy every bite.

But he can feel drowsiness cling to him like sticky fingers and just gives into it for now, slow breaths and heat from his body pooling around him in his cocoon of warmth.

And true to his word, Hannibal sits with him, running fingers through his hair and down the curve of his spine, over blanket-covered legs and down quivering arms. When he hears a fussy snore, watching Will turn his face against the pillow to seek out whatever comfort he can find, Hannibal leans low to ghost a kiss across his cheek.

The scent of soup fills the kitchen, burbling in its pot, and Hannibal circles a mound of flour upon the granite counter. He creates a crater, eggs cracked neatly to its center, and with patient hands and thoughts of Will, he works them together to create a dough. Would that easing away Will’s suffering was so easy as this, he frowns, to work his body to tender laxity and feel him soft again, rather than taut and hot as iron. Would that Hannibal might prove a better host for this uninvited virus, that it would leave his boy alone and take him instead.

The pasta is pressed flat, severed into flat ribbons, and still soft, added to the soup. He tastes, again and again, a touch of salt but not much more, a healthy dash of pepper. Traditional, perhaps, even plebeian, but he hopes it will be a comfort to the boy, and wonders if his father ever fed him soup when he was small and sick, or if he was left to fend for it alone.

Hannibal touches the soup to his lips, but tastes only his own displeasure in every wrong he can imagine done to Will, whether sickness or loneliness or anything at all. Nothing satisfies Hannibal right now, nothing will but to see his little wolf wild and strong and racing barefoot and exuberant through the house again.

An hour past, maybe more, and Hannibal returns with a soft mattress squeak that heralds his arrival, glazed terracotta bowl in hand.

“Will,” he whispers, setting the soup aside to lay heavy over his boy, unsure whether the fever has made him delirious yet, wary of him waking up at all uncertain as to Hannibal’s presence.

Will tenses, relaxes immediately and wriggles back against the familiar weight and warmth of Hannibal there. He hadn’t dreamed, fallen too quick into sleep and too deep. Now he finds that waking is as painful as the bath had been, the fever quick to set and settle. He knows that logically it will pass by the night, by the next morning, but he feels like a ball of misery where he’s curled up and makes a sound to make that clear.

But he does turn, comfortable when he can press his face, even through the sheet, to Hannibal’s chest and breathe him in.

He smells like flour and spices, like the warmth of the kitchen and just a little of the salt of the ocean, from the night before. He smells like clean sweat and washed clothes. He smells like Hannibal. Will smiles and pulls at the sheet until he can press against Hannibal’s skin properly, nuzzle him and tangle himself further in the sheets trying to get closer.

“You made soup,” he mumbles, smiling wider and biting his lip before opening his eyes to look up at the man pressed close to him. “I love you.”

“Congested as you are, you’ll hardly be able to taste it,” Hannibal chides him, tilting to his side to bring the boy against him, hushing the whimper he makes at being moved. “I used chicken, this time -”

“Instead of -”

“Instead of finer cuts that would be wasted on your besieged senses.” He smiles, cheek tilting against sweat-damp curls, lips parted to feel the heat radiant from Will’s skin beneath. “I love you, little wolf, but I will more so if you eat. Come, sit.”

With strong arms made gentle in their carefulness, Hannibal rises and draws Will up against him. Limbs drag and tangle, clumsy and weighted with exhaustion from the illness that leaves Will aching, until Hannibal settles with his boy in his lap, and takes up the soup to hold for him.

Hannibal tucks his nose against Will’s cheek and breathes him in, sighing slow. “Are you well enough to manage a spoon, or must I become a nursemaid entirely to you? Lazy boy.”

Will laughs, wriggling back against Hannibal’s chest, and takes the bowl up obediently, the spoon as well. He eats slowly, savoring as much as he can, and can feel immediately when his stomach begins to revolt, when it tightens and tenses and presses against him and Will sets the bowl down in his lap and breathes slowly to ease the feeling away.

He sighs when Hannibal brings his hand up to stroke Will’s hair from his forehead, leans back against him and moans quietly to keep his hand there, cool, against his hot skin.

He manages a few more spoonfuls of soup before he has to set it away, and turns to curl up against the man’s chest, small as possible, delighting that in the time they have known each other he has little changed from the lithe little thing Hannibal had once tried to smother and found worth keeping around.

“Please don’t go off island this week.”

Hannibal folds his legs and leans back against the headboard, so Will can rest against him without being prone. He rubs shivers down the boy’s spine, hushing him gently when one rattles him enough to draw a sound. Though he’s grown in strength, he is still small by comparison, and especially in moments like this when he makes himself even more so. Hannibal has always loved this about him, this and so much more, that Will has somehow - despite the years, now, they’ve survived together - remained so entirely youthful.

“Would you miss me?”

A complaint is voiced, though not with words, a fussy little noise that widens Hannibal’s smile.

“Then I will stay,” he agrees, and both know that there was never any question of it. Hannibal reaches to drag up the covers around Will’s shoulders, though he finds himself quickly overheated between the weight of sweaty, feverish boy, held hot beneath blankets. “So long as you need me, I will stay.”

“Then you’ll never leave,” Will mumbles, shifts to settle back into rest now that he’s near horizontal again. His breathing eases quickly in rest and Hannibal finds himself just watching the ceiling with its shivering reflections from the ocean and the glass. He could get up and get a book, should get up and set the soup away so it doesn’t sour, doesn’t fill the room with the smell of it that will need to be aired later.

But he finds that after a while he falls into a doze as well, cradling the heavy warmth of Will against him, the house quiet and the ocean keeping time with their breaths in the ebb and flow against the shore.

It is late afternoon when he wakes again, and Will is nuzzling him in an utterly childish and sweet gesture, over and over again his chest, eyes fever-bright and cheeks pink with it, bare beneath the blankets and trembling with adrenaline.

“We slept for hours,” Will announces, words soft, grin wide as he turns to draw the side of his face almost forcefully against Hannibal’s skin.

The older man grumbles, a low sound that rumbles through his chest and earns another eager nuzzle from the sweat-slick boy atop him. He runs a hand through his hair, down his back - the fever has not yet broken but the sweetness in the air has taken on a particular pungency that creases Hannibal’s brow.

“Sleep more,” he intones. “Until the heat abates -”

“It never abates,” laughs Will, shaky fingers running down Hannibal’s belly soft enough for him to twitch in response. “Not when you’re here.”

“Then I will leave, that you might rest properly.”

“You said you wouldn’t.”

“Then do as I say,” Hannibal tells him, grasping Will’s chin in his hand and bringing their gaze to meet. Will’s pupils are wide enough in feverish delirium to bring the blue sky of his eyes to night, lips parted in wanting and beautifully scarlet, his cheeks ruddy. Will leans to kiss him and Hannibal leans away, smiling despite himself. “Typhoid Mary, reborn. No, Will.”

Will makes a strange sound, almost like a disappointed warble with the way his throat feels hot and his sinuses ache and he flops down on top of the older man, defeated, eyes up from beneath his hair as he watches Hannibal like a chastened animal. Had he a tail it would be swinging lazily back and forth.

Hannibal can’t help but smile, knowing his boy is tired, knowing he is in pain and unwell and craves that closeness in his vulnerability. A hand comes up to stroke the wet hair from Will’s forehead and Hannibal sighs.

“I might read to you, if you’re good.”

Will’s smile is bright, ridiculous in that. He hums, contented, and levers himself up for Hannibal to go and get a book - several books - for them to share. He takes the bowl, too, back to the kitchen to empty and wash. He will feed him again come evening, bring him tea and soothe his aching limbs.

It is a strange, nagging need to return to his boy, from downstairs, from just downstairs, when he can spend weeks apart from him in other countries, when he can spend that time in a blissful ache to see him again. But here he needs to return, needs to be there with his lovely, fevered, delirious boy.

He returns with three books, all differing in language and genre, and Will curls comfortable at his side like the little creature Hannibal so fondly calls him after.

“I haven’t heard you speak Italian for a while,” Will comments, syllables slippery in the language itself as he regards the books on offer.

Hannibal’s brow lifts, but his eyes are soft, the words languid and sleek from his boy’s sleep-thick tongue. He takes up a book from the small stack, poetry of nature and cosmos, immortal love and all its follies. Hannibal holds the book against his belly and waits for his boy to settle, stroking softly through his hair.

“ _The moth beholds not death as forth he flies into the splendor of the living flame_ ,” recites Hannibal, the language purred in a rhythmic lilt, until Will speaks.

“Bruno?”

“Mm,” agrees Hannibal, regarding him curiously.

“You know they burned him,” murmurs the boy, and Hannibal’s heart swells so suddenly he wonders if it won’t simply burst.

“Yes,” Hannibal agrees, “for heresy, not for his poems.”

“To the ignorant poetry is heresy,” Will considers, turning on his back so he can feel Hannibal’s hand slide over his chest instead to curl and release his fingers in a gentle scratch over and over, move to cup his chin, back down again. “To the ignorant all creativity and art and beauty is worth burning, because they fear it.”

Will blinks, raises his eyes to regard Hannibal upside down again and smiles. “Please keep going?”

So he does. One poem and another, recitation on some, others carefully read where he has not memorized them. With some, he hears Will’s voice join him, whispered and little but accurate in their rhythm and rhyme. It’s comfortable, this soft connection, reading together, pausing to discuss things, clarify a word or a meaning, talk history and times and situations that would lead one to such words and why they matter.

By the time evening rolls around, Will is wriggling in bed, impatient for more words and more touches and more. So Hannibal gets up to make him dinner, make them both dinner - as his stomach reminds him that he, too, has eaten little today - and Will clambers off the bed to go to the bathroom, laughing when he nearly falls on weak legs and catches himself against the sink with a curse.

Hannibal is there, as if he hadn’t been nearly out the bedroom door by the time Will stumbled, startling speed that finds sure hands against flushed skin, and strong arms around Will’s middle to keep him upright. Then bent. Then lower, Hannibal’s chest against his back and lips against his spine, until Will laughs from it and clings to Hannibal’s arms with pale fingers.

“Must I help you even with this? Food and water, tea and now -” Hannibal doesn’t finish the sentence, grinning as Will sputters a giggle.

“Will you?” The boy pleads, coy. “Will you hold it for me?”

“There is little dignity availed in illness, but in you there is none to be found at all, in sickness or in health.”

Another kiss is touched to the top of his bare shoulder, another against the blade of bone just below, before Hannibal rights him and releases him gingerly. He is reluctant to go, even as Will stands without trouble now, but at least he turns away to afford him that much privacy.

“Come and sit with me in the kitchen,” Hannibal tells him. “I will not have you falling and bleeding out while I’m away.”

Will laughs again, flushes, washes his hands and goes to lean against Hannibal’s back before letting the man go so he can follow him downstairs. He grabs a pair of shorts, the shirt Hannibal had worn the night before and keeps his hand on the rail going down.

It is embarrassing, being so weak that he needs the help to go downstairs, that he needs the help to not fall over. He feels like he’s eighty, pushing up on his toes to regain his feline balance before walking to the barstool and pushing himself up to sit on it, legs dangling, body pressed to the blissfully cold counter.

“Will you eat soup with me?” He asks, pushing his arms out like a cat-stretch, fingers splayed, and rests that way, taking up as much space as he can as he watches the older man work.

“If you like,” answers Hannibal, watching Will over his shoulder for a moment of unmistakable fondness. A smile quirks the corner of his mouth and he returns to the stove. “We will stay with soup, for a time, until you are able to finish it. Toast alongside, a touch of butter. Water.”

He sets a glass before him, and plucks loose the remaining leaves from the morning’s cuttings to make another round of tea. To it, he adds dried chamomile, to - he hopes - settle the little wolf to dozing once more.

“Perhaps we will forgo further adventures in the sea - an experience best had once, and held in memory.”

The words are teasing, only half-genuine, and Hannibal smiles, unseen with his back to Will, when there is a note of protest.

“The ocean calls to me. You taught me never to be rude,” Will says, forcing himself to sit up and sip the water, even though he wants nothing at all to do with it. He frowns, sets it down again, not even half drunk, and tilts his head, coy and little, when Hannibal turns again and raises his eyebrow at it.

“I will finish it for a kiss.”

“Will.”

Will bites his lip, smile bright and eyes the same and Hannibal shakes his head. Will hums, ducks his head, demure, little, teasing. “I never said it had to be to my lips.”

Hannibal regards him, this clever and silly boy whom he adores beyond words in any language he possesses. He nods, just once, steps close, and plants a kiss against the boy’s forehead, another for good measure to his nose, and steps away.

“Two. For this glass and another before bed.”

Will laughs, buries his face in his hands and groans, before reluctantly reaching for his glass and obediently drinking it down.

“A lesson in specificity,” he sighs. “And I was trying not to be crude in getting you to suck my cock.”

“Will,” Hannibal says again, lower, a thrum of warning in it.

“What?” The grin is heard, despite Hannibal’s back being to him as he continues tasting the soup, adjusting here and there. “Don’t you like it when I talk dirty to you?”

“No,” comes the flat, atonal answer. “I am counting.”

“Oh? Have I sworn? Cock isn’t a curse - it’s just a name.”

“Used crudely, and deliberately. You have also said ‘fuck’ more than once, including telling me ‘fuck you’.”

The words, purred in elegant accented syllables, send shivers anew over Will’s overheated skin. “Say that again.”

“I will not, awful boy. Nor will I indulge you in your request, no matter how delicious the thought of it.”

“My cock?” Will asks, popping each consonant as if it were bubblegum in the mouth of an insolent schoolboy. “Even if I were hard, _dripping_ with how much I need you to -”

“Do not.”

“- wrap your lips around and -”

“I am counting, Will.”

“ - suck me off?” He finishes, before breaking into a laugh, buried in his arms. The stool rocks onto its front legs as Will rolls his hips against the air and makes a sound, just soft, that forces Hannibal to resist a shiver.

“You could not possibly desire it. In all your depravity, debauchery, utterly wanton misbehavior, Will, you could not possibly.”

Will shivers again and slips from the stool to pad with sweat-sticky feet on his toes to just behind Hannibal, knowing he hears him, knowing he will not startle as Will wraps his arms around him and nuzzles his shoulder.

“I always want you,” he says. “Even on my deathbed. Just you. Just before I go.” Another laugh, youthful and little, but when Will rubs up teasing against Hannibal’s ass he isn’t hard enough to warrant his words, genuinely too tired, feeling too sick to do more than tease and tangle his words around Hannibal like a net.

“But wouldn’t you want to?” Will asks. “Sleepy and pliant and all yours to bend and fuck how you please?”

Hannibal groans, sets the spoon into the soup and leans back as Will’s arms curl tighter over him in his adoration.

“Couple more days and I will feel good and you can add up all the fucks I did not give, now, to that day and remind me of them.”

“You will be reminded,” Hannibal promises him, ignoring the stiffening in his own trousers at the images Will shapes for him in words poured out like honey. “For days after, you will feel every ‘fuck’ and ‘cock’ that left your befouled mouth, marked in bruises upon your skin.”

He sets the spoon aside and turns, held still in sleek arms over which his fingers trace.

“So speak them freely, wretched child. Let the illness leave your body in the filth you speak. By the time I am finished counting back every instance for you, your once-snowy skin will be a field of blossoms, violets and goldenrods, greenery fanned around their edges.”

Hannibal reaches back to grasp the boy’s wrist, and press his palm between his legs, to feel what Will has caused in him. His eyes hood as Will’s narrow in pleasure.

“I will paint your body like a canvas, and each and every stroke you will touch again with clever fingers and harden at the thought of it.”

Will’s hand continues to move, slow and deliberate, fingers splaying and curling, rubbing harder and easing back, eyes up, sleepy and pleased at feeling this. At knowing he caused this. He wonders if they could, Will held up again and taken, almost gently, against a wall if they don’t make the bed. He wonders if they would, with Hannibal’s utterly sweet devotion in protecting him when he’s unwell.

“It will be beautiful,” Will murmurs. “I will wear nothing until they heal or you make more, so you can see.”

“Dreadful boy.”

“You were making soup for me,” Will reminds him, grinning wide, and letting him go to set his own hands behind his back, watch him, pleased, where he stands.

“Until I was cruelly distracted by an uncouth child who has wandered, infectious, into my kitchen,” snorts the older man, but in the corners of his eyes lingers a lasting amusement. He draws Will’s hand back from behind himself, and brings it to his lips. A kiss, touched to his palm, before Hannibal releases him to return to the soup, now bubbling.

“You will sit, feigning as though you are well-behaved, and you will eat all of this. Another glass of water before bed, another cup of tea. You will sleep.” There is a sound of protest from Will, but Hannibal continues. “You will do as I say, so that you are whole again, and I might break you again myself.”

Will hums another noise of displeasure but he goes, sits as he is told and waits like he is well-behaved. He smiles when the soup is set before him, when Hannibal ladles a bowl for himself and rests across the counter from Will to eat it with him, and leans in to nuzzle nose to nose with the older man.

“Anything you say,” he murmurs, grinning, and sits back to take up his spoon.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Cafuné** is the intimite act of gently running your fingers through your lover’s hair. This untranslatable Brazilian Portuguese word describes the affection of one of the sweetest moments, filled with pleasure and romance, in its purest form for all lovers.


End file.
